Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent

David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

by John William Nelson

In early North America, carrying watercraft—usually canoes—and supplies across paths connecting one body of water to another was essential in the establishment of both Indigenous and European mobility in the continent's interior. The Chicago portage, a network of overland canoe routes that connected the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds, grew into a crossroads of interaction as Indigenous and European people vied for its control during early contact and colonization. John William Nelson charts the many peoples that traversed and sought power along Chicago's portage paths from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, including Indigenous Illinois traders, French explorers, Jesuit missionaries, Meskwaki warriors, British officers, Anishinaabe headmen, and American settlers. Nelson compellingly demonstrates that even deep within the interior, power relations fluctuated based on the control of waterways and local environmental knowledge.

Pushing beyond political and cultural explanations for Indigenous-European relations in the borderlands of North America, Nelson places environmental and geographic realities at the center of the history of Indigenous Chicago, offering a new explanation for how the United States gained control of the North American interior through a two-pronged subjugation of both the landscapes and peoples of the continent.

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2023

About the author

John Nelson is a historian and professor, teaching at Texas Tech University. He specializes in the history of early America, with an emphasis on the borderlands of Indigenous North America and the colonial Atlantic World. His research examines the ways ecology and geography shaped the terms of cross-cultural interaction between Native peoples and European colonizers from first contact through the early republican era of the United States. Nelson earned his B.A. at Gettysburg College and his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame.

Nelson has published work on the American West, Indigenous America, the American Revolution, and the environmental history of the Great Lakes region. His first book, Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent, explores how a particular local landscape along Chicago's continental divide influenced colonial encounters from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Reviews

[Maggie Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

super slay what can i say

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent and remarkable book.

[Phil Bayly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The lesser-told story of colonizing the Midwest, a land to portage. The southern end of Lake Michigan had plentiful rivers that ran around it, and abundant lakes fed by streams. It seemed to be a perfect spot to locate commerce and community. And there was mud, so much mud.
At the time, the ground that would become Chicago belonged to the French. But the French were really only guests, of thousands of Indigenous people; like the Ojibwes, the Potawatomis, and the determined Anishinaabe.
What unfolded was something akin to King Philip's War in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Anishinaabe tried to fight for the land and tried to compromise over it. In the end, however, there was too much desire to possess so much acreage and the wealth that comes with it.

[John Ripke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am no Historian but this was really well done. Very interesting if you want to learn about the early transformation of Chicago.